Smartphones and other mobile computing devices are being used in new ways to streamline interactions between consumers, merchants, and third parties. Methods of providing advertisements, coupons, payment transactions, and other interactions are changing quickly as mobile computing device technology improves.
Location data from a mobile computing device can be used for numerous applications. Many applications use the location data for locating friends, playing games, and assisting a user with directions, for example. The location data can also be used to alert a user when the user and the user's computing device are in the vicinity of a point of interest. Mobile communication device application can trigger notifications with checkout-related information (for example, gift cards, offers, or loyalty information) when the user comes within a predefined radius of the merchant location. However, the more appropriate time to trigger this information is when the user is in a close proximity to the merchant's point of sale terminal.
In other conventional point of interest alert systems within a merchant location, a point of interest beacon is marked to represent a known point of interest within the merchant location. For example, a beacon placed near a known location of a display is marked so that the beacon, and the information provided in response to communicating with the beacon, is associated with the display. However, associating the beacon with the correct point of interest and the correct response information can be troublesome for the merchant's employees and is prone to error. For example, the beacon can be easily moved or wrongly programmed. Accordingly, there is a need for a method of precisely identifying the location of the merchant point of sale terminal so that the location data can be used to can trigger notifications with checkout-related transactional information (for example, gift cards, offers, or loyalty information) at a time when the user is most in need of this information.